


Sewer Crawl

by ArdeaWrites



Category: Half-Life
Genre: No Dialogue, Short, contemplating the crowbar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 01:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18022283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArdeaWrites/pseuds/ArdeaWrites
Summary: Trying to capture the feeling of that slog through the sewer channels, where all the doors are locked from the wrong side.





	Sewer Crawl

He had to go back in there.   
Brown muck swirled past. The smell was rotten and biological, with a tang of benzene. The suit could keep out the smell, not even with all its advanced filters and hood, or the ever-present sensation of dampness leaching through. His skin crawled.   
And he had to go back in there.   
The mechanical room was a tiny oasis of normalcy. Here, behind a locked door, the amenity of an old folding chair and battered wooden worktable offered rest. He sat on the chair and rested his arms on the table, and for one minute he was a physicist again, updating facility records and experiment data. He could walk out that door and up the stairs, just doing his job. Lunch hour would come. He’d eat his sandwich and drink his soda. Listen to the scientists talk. Go- no, if he pictured home now he’d never make it. 

Out that locked door were monsters and man-killers. Dying scientists and ineffective security guards. How many men had he shot, stabbed, murdered? Sewer water had washed most of the blood from his suit, but not all of it. If they caught him, they’d kill him. No quarter asked or given. Monsters, military, radiation, malfunctioning machinery, a scared guard or a paranoid scientist, today one of them would end him.   
He was so tired. 

The crowbar fit easily in his hand. It was a tool, familiar and purposeful. Gore spattered its pronged end, some alien and some human. He wiped it off, leaving a smear of oily muck on the work table.   
Some signature, he thought, and wondered if he’d ever hold a pen again.   
He sat on the sewer canal ledge and eased himself back in. The liquid was tepid, at least not icy cold. Small favors.   
He tried to keep his head above, tried not to breathe too deep, until he reached the gears. The current ran through them, and so would he. He took a deep breath and ducked under.


End file.
